Glimpses
by websandwhiskers
Summary: A series of semi-related, very short stories set in the same movie-verse AU as my story 'Unbroken'. Pairings will be AbexNuala and HellboyxLiz; see individual chapter summaries for warnings and such. Rated high just to be safe.
1. Been There

"I can't say that I'm sorry for my actions," Abe began carefully

**Title: **Been There

**Rating:** PG

**Disclaimer: **Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and all its associated characters and concepts belong to a whole bunch of people who aren't me, including but not limited to Guillermo del Toro, who is pretty much God. I'm making no profit and intend no disrespect, so please don't sue me.

**Characters/Pairings:** Abe, Hellboy – implied Abe/Nuala and Hellboy/Liz

**Summary: **A very short, considerably-more-lighthearted little exchange that takes place immediately following Unbroken. Friendship fic.

* * *

"I can't say that I'm sorry for my actions," Abe began carefully.

"But you knew all along what she was gonna do, right?" Hellboy suggested. "There was just no chance for you to clue the rest of us in." There was a certain hard-edged nonchalance to his tone that told Abe he knew very well that was not the case – but he was, never the less, willing to offer a friend the courtesy of a convenient fabrication.

It was both humbling and mortifying, and though he felt vaguely as though he was being rude and ungrateful in rejecting the tacit offer to simply put the matter behind them, Abe answered, "No."

Hellboy turned and scowled at him.

"I can't say I would do things differently," Abe insisted. "I would do it again – but for whatever it may be worth, I'd like you to know that I understand I've betrayed your trust. For _that, _I am sorry, and if you feel you can no longer work with -"

"So you were gonna sacrifice the whole human race, to save her," Hellboy, interrupted, jerking his head in the direction of the infirmary. "The one woman you love."

"It was more of a calculated risk than -" Abe stopped himself, grimaced, and stood straighter. "Yes. Yes, I was."

Hellboy just looked at him a long moment. "Well, hey, who hasn't been there?" he finally replied, shrugging. He gave Abe a clap on the back that sent the more slender man staggering. "You know what I wanna do now? I wanna go celebrate. Have a beer. In a bar. Just because I can. You coming?"

"I – I think I'd better -" Abe wavered, glancing back towards the infirmary, torn. He felt almost sick with gratitude at having been granted such easy forgiveness, and hated to decline. While he had no intention of ever, _ever _getting drunk again, he could have _one_ beer . . except . . _to leave her now . . _

"Yeah, yeah," Hellboy responded easily, already walking away.


	2. Eye of the Beholder

"You know you aren't so strange to me," Nuala murmured

**Title:** Eye of the Beholder

**Rating:** PG-13

**Characters/Pairings:** Abe/Nuala

**Disclaimer:** Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and all its associated characters and concepts belong to a whole bunch of people who aren't me, including but not limited to Guillermo del Toro, who is pretty much God. I'm making no profit and intend no disrespect, so please don't sue me.

**Summary:** A quiet, slightly silly moment for Abe and Nuala; this is very, very short and complete and utter fluff, though it exists in the same AU 'verse as Unbroken, Going On, Keep Thee Only (This series needs a title; Unbrokenverse? That sounds really atrociously snotty, doesn't it? Will keep thinking on that one . . . )

**Author's Note:** I know that comic-'verse Abe has an established backstory, but movie-'verse Abe does not, it's still a complete mystery – and besides, this is random whimsical speculation on Nuala's part, unlikely to be factually accurate.

* * *

"You know you aren't so strange to me," Nuala murmured, her fingertips tracing the patterns of darker blue that ran across his chest. The lay curled together on the floor on an impromptu bed made of discarded clothing, beside his tank. "I really think it has not been good for you, living so long among humans, seeing forms unlike theirs only in the worst of circumstances."

"You don't . . know of others, do you?" Abe asked hesitantly. "Like me?"

"No," Nuala sighed. "No, I suspect you are unique. But _that _is _not _unique, not among my kind. Perhaps -" she tilted her head up to give him a mischievous little smile, "your mother was an elf, who fell in love with a sea serpent."

"Oh dear." Abe frowned, and Nuala giggled.

"No, you're thinking of it all wrong," she scolded playfully. "They're intelligent creatures, seas serpents. Not beasts at all."

"Oh," Abe replied, still not knowing quite what to make of this suggestion. "I suppose I don't know much about . . sea serpents."

"Mm," Nuala replied, settling her head back onto his shoulder. "Well, there aren't so many of them left who will venture close to land. Who knows what's in the depths, though?" She tilted her head up again. "You could, I suppose, if you wanted."

"I have wondered, sometimes," Abe allowed. "Considered the possibility, anyway, of just . . going off, into the sea. Seeking. It's tempting, but not very logical; I'd likely starve, or be eaten by something."

"There are a great many hungry somethings out in the world," Nuala allowed.

"And I have a place here," Abe went on.

"It's an insidious thing, having a place," Nuala replied.

"You think I should, then?"

"Hrmm. No," Nuala replied firmly. "I like this place you have. Besides, a sea serpent _is_ rather more likely to eat you than to answer questions as to whether he ever dallied with an elf."

"If sea serpents are so vicious, doesn't that make the whole proposition rather unlikely?" Abe questioned.

"Of course not," Nuala insisted, "if they were very much in love."

"How did they _meet?" _Abe pressed, still doubtful.

"Perhaps she drowned," Nuala suggested.

"I think death tends to interfere in conception."

"Nearly drowned," she corrected.

"And he didn't have her for a convenient snack because . . ?"

"Because," Nuala reached up, cupping a hand around the back of his head and tilting his face down towards hers, "she had such fathomless eyes."


	3. Sweet

**Title: **Sweet

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and all its associated characters and concepts belong to a whole bunch of people who aren't me, including but not limited to Guillermo del Toro, who is pretty much God. I'm making no profit and intend no disrespect, so please don't sue me.

**Characters/Pairings:** Abe/Nuala

**Summary:** It's the things that aren't perfect that are magic. Total fluff.

* * *

"This is unexpected – though most welcome," Abe said, quickly climbing the steps out of his tank. Nuala stood a pace or so back from the water, skirts held up, smiling a bit sheepishly.

"I'm afraid I'm truant from a Council meeting," she said. "They're still . . discussing . . the prospect of a tax on human goods. Arguing. No. Arguing is really too kind a word for it. Squabbling. Bickering."

"Like small children?" Abe suggested, retrieving a towel from the corner and making a perfunctory effort to dry himself before approaching her; if she was keeping her distance from the water, that meant she had only a little time before she had to return to her court, and in what she was already wearing. No need to stir up talk by leaving water splotches on her gown.

"Like small hens," Nuala replied dryly. "Or possibly something with even fewer brains." She reached out to clasp his hands as he approached, showing him a cacophonous jumble of irate voices and hands banging the Council table and chairs being pushed back, scraping on the floor. "And you? How is your investigation progressing?"

Abe shrugged, and threw together a haphazard mental slide show of the progress – or rather, lack of progress – of their present case. He leaned down, a careful, dress-sparing distance between their bodies, to capture her lips.

She was having none of that, closing the distance between them and mouth opening –

"Mmph!" Nuala pulled back abruptly from the kiss – which might have been hurtful, if Abe hadn't been doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. He had the sudden impression of the most _awful _taste.

If the unfortunately comical expression of horror on Nuala's face was any indication, she'd had roughly the same experience. She looked as though she was trying hard to compose herself, but her mouth was simply not cooperating.

"Oh," Abraham blurted, cringing in sudden comprehension. "Oh dear. I'm sorry."

"_What _were you just eating?" Nuala asked, trying and failing for a tone of benign curiosity.

"A few well-aged eggs," Abe explained, wincing.

"Well-aged?"

"I believe the humans refer to them as 'rotten'," he admitted. "I _am _sorry, I hadn't thought – good lord, is _that _how they taste to you?"

"Yes," Nuala replied, eyes going distant. She licked her lips, very cautiously, mouth still fixed in half a grimace. Abe could feel the ghostly flutter of her mind just brushing his, searching – like moth wings, and yet warm. "Yes, absolutely terrible, so you can't . ." The set of her lips relaxed a little, though her brow furrowed. " . . can't possibly . . be tasting the same . . " Her tongue retreated back into her mouth. "And you're not. It's completely different."

"They're really quite lovely," Abe offered tentatively, running his own tongue over his teeth and trying to swallow unobtrusively; the ghastly aftertaste of her perception remained. He hoped it wouldn't come to mind next time he indulged; he really did enjoy his eggs. "Sort of . . pungent, and complex. Like strong cheese."

"I know," Nuala responded, sounding utterly perplexed. "You really do enjoy them."

"If you'd like to try -"

"No, thank you," she responded instantly. Then her eyes focused on his face and her mind withdrew. Her lips pursed momentarily in contemplation – and then she smiled.

Abe tilted his head in question.

"I was just considering other unique tastes," Nuala said aloud, her thoughts still shrouded and her smile going positively wicked. "I do believe I'm going to have to introduce you to candied nettles."

"Candied . . nettles?" Abe asked, a bit doubtfully.

"One of my favorite things," Nuala nodded, still smiling that same mischievous smile. "They require one to become accustomed to them - they're rather . . sharp. But so sweet."


	4. The End of the Beginning

**Title: **The End of the Beginning

**Fandom: **Hellboy II

**Rating: **PG

**Characters/Pairings: **Hellboy/Liz, Abe/Nuala

**Disclaimer: **Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and all its associated characters and concepts belong to a whole bunch of people who aren't me, including but not limited to Guillermo del Toro, who is pretty much God. I'm making no profit and intend no disrespect, so please don't sue me.

**Summary / Author's Notes: **Continues in the AU 'verse of Unbroken, follows shortly after Surfacing. I'm taking some liberties with the canon backstory here, and assuming that Prof. Broom's book of mythology had – as storybooks tend to do – made the story both more remote and a bit grander than it was, and that the creation of the Golden Army didn't really occur quite so shortly following, um, the beginning of time. To me, mankind wanting to take over the Earth sounds an awful lot like Roman conquest, and the elves do seem to have originated in the British Isles, so . . that's roughly where I'm pinning that, 300AD or so. I am aware that some of the elves' names reference much earlier mythology, but the story we're given in canon doesn't match those stories, so I'm going to go on the theory that the elves just liked to re-use traditional names.

So anyway, that's all really fairly extraneous to this, I just felt like sharing my ridiculous geekiness. This is Nuala's coronation.

* * *

Liz had no idea what she'd expected of the Elven Court, but this was not it.

Well, the crumbling old factory wasn't what she'd imagined – but some of the rest of it was. Some of it was beyond anything she _could _have imagined - the costumes, for one.

She supposed she probably ought not to think of them that way – these were definitely not kids trick-or-treating. Probably they were high ceremonial robes or old family armor or whatever, but it was hard to think of the red-clad figure now facing Nuala – the one whose headdress included a set of painted horns, and completely obscured his face – as anything other than costumed. The stony-faced, bright eyed delegations of Goblins and Trolls and God knew what else that she couldn't name, the agitated crowd they'd had to wade through to enter the throne room, it all reminded her a bit too much of a Renaissance Fair. It was so unreal, it would be too easy to start to think of it as pretend.

But it wasn't pretend at all – these were not slight obsessive accountants and sales clerks who would take off their masks and go home at the end of the day. This was a displaced and poverty-stricken population composed of refugees of a dozen different races and cultures who had just seen the end of several hundred years of destructively apathetic rule by a depressed, disaffected and borderline suicidal king. This was a court held on land they didn't even properly own (though Abe – or rather, the broker he'd hired – was in the process of sending them all into terrifying amounts of debt trying to rectify that before the end of the day. Liz still wasn't entirely sure why she'd co-signed for that one, except that her parents' insurance money was mostly just sitting there and it was Abe, and he'd asked, and when had Abe ever asked for anything?)

And it was apparently Elven custom that none of this be planned or rehearsed or decided ahead of time; all the heir presumptive was permitted to do beforehand was summon the Council with the express intent of claiming the throne. The actual claiming was a matter of the degree to which the heir managed to demonstrate his (or in this case – this first-ever-in-the-course-of-Elvendom, apparently, case – her) impressiveness.

This was, in short, a powder keg to make the Middle East look like a tea party.

"What're they saying?" Liz whispered.

"I'm not following every word," Abe replied, sounding frustrated. "The dialect is unfamiliar, I suppose some sort of high ceremonial -" He glanced sideways at her. "Sorry. The . . individual in red, I gather he's head of the Council . . he asked her to identify herself, and now she's reciting her lineage – by their full, true names," Abe said, sounding a little shocked about this.

"That's a big deal?" Liz asked; she seemed to remember something about Fey being controlled by their true names.

"It's a display of confidence. Power. And also sacrifice," Abe replied. "She puts herself at the service of her people, at least symbolically, though it's understood that anyone worthy of the throne ought to be able to resist the compulsion to obey when issued by a lesser Fey, true name or no."

"Provided they're actually lesser," Liz guessed, frowning.

"Precisely," Abe said, sounding somewhat less than happy about it.

"Are we thinking they are?" Liz asked, fidgeting with the snap on her empty holster.

"She has every right to the throne," Abe replied firmly – which was not, Liz noted, actually an answer to her question.

Nuala sang out something that didn't sound like a name, to Liz.

"The throne of my people calls me," Abe translated. "Or possibly compels me, it's -"

He was interrupted by the Council officiant asking another question, voice full and ringing and composed of meaningless consonants, to Liz's ears.

"Who will bear witness to this?" Abe translated quietly.

"That's not us, is it?" Red hissed in her other ear.

"Don't think so?" Liz responded.

"No," Abe replied, sounding tense and hushed, and then Nuala was speaking. Her answer was strident, echoing up to the crumbling ceilings, outwardly confident; Liz thought she heard a bit of bluster to it, though, almost too much confidence. Her stomach turned over uneasily, and she could feel a trickle of heat whispering along her skin.

Around them, the Council chamber went utterly, dead silent. Abe provided no translation, but he'd gone absolutely rigid at Liz's side. It took an effort of will to keep her fingertips from sparking; she didn't understand much of what was going on, but she knew the feel of this room, this moment. She'd been in this moment before, more times than she liked to remember. This was the moment when things could all go very, very wrong.

"What?" Red whispered almost sub-audibly, something dark and wary in his voice that told her he felt it too, the tension, the way a dozen possible futures danced on the tip of this one instant. Liz turned her head to pass the question, but Abe was already answering, quiet and terse as he could.

"She said," Abe whispered, "I call the Earth to witness."

Liz blinked.

"She what?" Red muttered incredulously in her ear.

In the otherwise absolute silence, the sound of rustling leaves and crumbling earth answered. Liz's eyes snapped back to the front of the room, and Nuala; the Council leader had backed off a pace, so that she stood alone in front of the throne, eyes closed, head bowed, arms held a little away from her sides and fingers spread wide.

At her feet, a tiny sprout of ivy was making its way up through the leaves, writhing like a snake.

"Huh," Red breathed.

"Wait," Abe murmured, and Liz felt something stirring in the room, like wind, like fire, soft and warm and tingling on her skin. A slight breeze ruffled her hair, and she suddenly didn't want to move, didn't want to _breath, _so great was the feeling of imminence. Her hand crept to her belly, fingers splayed protectively. She could hear Red's breathing at her side, could feel the unease radiating off of him; whatever this was, it was making him uncomfortable. It was making her . . she couldn't say. Aware. It was making her _aware. _She could taste the flavor of sap on the air from the leaves that lay dead and crushed beneath her feet. Everything was shining.

The twisting sprout of ivy burst into leaf, and there was a rumbling around them, a vibration coming up from the earth. It was no longer silent; the Elven Council and the delegations of the other races of Fey and the assembled onlookers were all murmuring, a hundred different tongues speaking a dozen different languages, and it suddenly occurred to Liz with blinding clarity that she was human, here, the only human – the representative of humanity.

_I'm witnessing this for my entire species, _Liz thought, incredulous – and then the ground all around them exploded.

Trees burst up through the walls, scattering brick and metal only for it to be caught by the reaching arms of vines. They twisted and tangled up through the dilapidated structure as if it were made of paper, some as thick around as a person, pulling the shattered remnants of building in and winding around them, contorting to fit their shape and then swallowing them hole as they shot towards the patchwork ceiling. It was deafening. Pale, bare branches spread like crackling glass and then blossomed with new, yellow leaves.

The ground beneath Liz's feet writhed, sprouts of things bursting into full bloom around her boots, a tendril of something twisting itself into a grommet. Red was muttering something beside her, probably swearing, but it was drowned out by the sound of the earth ripping open to accommodate enormous, crawling twists of root, mushrooms erupting up between them in clouds of dust, moss growing over them. The vines had reached the ceiling, and Liz could only stare up in paralyzed wonder, trusting the vines to catch the falling rubble. They did, reaching out like the arms of lovers to twine around one another, creating a dome above them.

It made her think of Celtic art, knots – there was no symmetry to it, no pattern she could see, and yet there _was, _for just a moment there was something there in the patches of churning grey sky and the twists of green and the fall of petals as things passed from flower into strange, bright fruit, some sense, some purpose – and then it was gone, and around them, all went still.

The room was quiet once more, but it was a different room than it had been. Liz was reminded of the death of the forest Elemental, but that had been nothing to compare to this. The stone remained here and there, suspended amidst the green like bits of broken glass pressed into a mosaic. The smell of upturned earth mingled with the scent of flowers Liz couldn't name. The dust began to settle, and petals and leaves fell on them, and then rain. Slowly at first, in big, fat drops, and they quicker, it rained. It poured. The rain washed through the leaves and ran down the trunks of the new trees and flattened Liz's hair to her head, and she just stared.

The throne, which had been rusting pipes, was now a thing made entirely of ivy; Liz couldn't see what had become of the furnace behind it, it was so overwhelmed in twists of something woody and tangled that bloomed a bright, bright red.

At Nuala's feet, that first, small sprout of ivy vine had woven itself into a circlet. Its leaves had withered; it alone appeared dead. Something in the symbolism of that sent a nervous skittering up Liz's spine. _It's a display of confidence. Power. And also sacrifice_

Nuala exhaled, long and slow and somehow audible even over the pounding of the rain. Her hands fell to her sides, and she opened her eyes.

The room _roared, _loud enough to make Liz flinch even after the spectacle she had just witnessed, the sound of hundreds of cheering voices combining into something that was almost a physical force itself. Liz turned to look at Red, and saw but couldn't hear him mutter, _damn. _At the front of the room the red-clad Council officiant bent and retrieved the ivy crown; Nuala ducked her head to receive it, and the cheers redoubled. Feet stomped, hands clapped, and Liz's head began pounding in rhythm to the raucous celebration around them.

Nuala stood a moment, crown on her head, just letting the adulation wash over as if she had been born to this – which, Liz reasoned, she had. The Council member who had questioned her knelt; she touched his head and said something that Liz doubted _he_ could hear, never mind the audience. He rose and another came forward to take his place.

"This will take some time," Abe shouted; his voice was shaky, and he didn't seem to know what to do with his hands – giddiness, Liz thought, and relief. "She said we're not to participate," he went on, "We're not to swear to her."

It wouldn't have occurred to Liz that they might, but apparently, she mused, it had occurred to Nuala to give Abe specific instructions about it - and she must have known exactly what he was thinking when she did. So, probably Abe had no problem with the idea of kneeling and swearing fealty.

Poor guy was so, so gone, Liz couldn't help thinking - head over teakettle – though the very mundanity of that thought seemed wrong in the setting, disorienting. Abe was in love and she was pregnant and they rode here in a car and there were standard-issue BPRD boots on her feet. With magic vines all tangled in them. It was hard to fit the pieces together in her head; she really didn't envy Nuala the task of trying to piece them together out in the real world.

The cheering and stomping were winding down, settling into quieter, but no less animated, conversation. Liz shook her foot loose of the little viney thing that had been attaching her to the floor and pushed her sodden hair back away from her face; the rain caught in her lashes and ran into her mouth, but she really didn't mind. She _noticed _not minding, felt the oddness of that, but it was warm and clean and really not that unpleasant. Not the same stuff she was used to, walking hunched down crowded sidewalks, watching it wash litter into gutters. Which was ridiculous – rain was rain.

Red gave his whole body a shuddering sort of shake, as if waking from a trance, or perhaps trying to dispel some unpleasant sensation. He shrugged his coat up higher on his shoulders, hunkering down into it.

Liz winced in sympathy and slid an arm around his waist, inside the coat; she was soaked, but then so was he, and it was still raining buckets, so what did it matter? She leaned into him and just let the rain wash over her and tried to impart some measure of comfort by way of plastering herself to his side; he thought his appearance mattered so much, but really it didn't – really it was so, so easy, sometimes, to just forget what he was. She guessed that whatever power Nuala had called up, it wasn't exactly demon-friendly.

"Abe?" Red leaned backward to speak around her, stone hand settling on her shoulder. Its weight was reassuring, familiar and grounding. It occurred to Liz, not for the first time, that she led a very strange life. "Don't take this wrong, but your girlfriend's pretty damned scary."

Liz slid her arm free of his coat and elbowed him in the gut, though without real feeling. She turned to glare at him. "We approve of scary girlfriends," she reminded him.

"Hey, we totally approve of scary girlfriends," Red replied immediately; Liz couldn't help but smile.

From somewhere behind her, Liz heard a renewed commotion, something that sounded a bit less celebratory. She tensed; there was no need to point this new sound out to Red. He was already standing straighter, pulling a little away, his case of Earth-magic heebie-jeebies forgotten - and then two of them turned, together, just as if there were gears between their bodies, two pieces, one movement.

Liz looked up at him, and Red looked down at her, and for half a moment she knew that he had felt the exact same thing she had there. There was no way to describe whatever they were together as anything other than really, seriously screwed up – but it fit. It worked. They worked.

"What?" Red said.

"Big dumb ape," Liz muttered, shaking her head, and turned away. She stood on her tip-toes, trying to peer over the crowd; she could make out the progression of _something _through the crowd by the commotion it stirred, but she couldn't tell what exactly it was that was coming at them. It wasn't flinging bodies, anyway, which was a good start. Nobody was screaming – though there was some growling. Growling was really never good.

"You got a bead on this, Abe?" Red asked.

"A suspicion," Abe replied.

"Feel like sharing?" Liz prompted impatiently, then took a deep breath as she felt some of that frustration bleeding out through her skin into little dancing blue arcs of flame up and down her arms. She momentarily closed her eyes, focusing on pulling the fire back. Her hands itched for the gun she wasn't carrying.

"Ah, hell," Red muttered. Liz's eyes snapped open.

She could see something sticking up out of the crowd, something that looked like . . a video camera?

And then she could make out human voices.

"Reporters," Liz said flatly, and tried to convince herself she could relax at this. Reporters did not _technically _count as incoming hostile forces. Technically.

"She was expecting this," Abe said levelly. "She wanted it, actually."

"She wanted to be on Jimmy Kimmel?" Liz snapped.

"When're you gonna give that up?" Red sighed.

"Never? How does 'never' work for you?" Liz retorted.

They'd started out with good seats, but with all the kneeling and swearing going on, much of the crowd was now between them and the throne; a murmuring began to pass through that assembly. Gradually they parted; Liz was jostled to the side by something blue-gray and scaly that muttered at her in what she presumed were words, repeating itself with increasing impatience.

"It's saying -" Abe began, tugging on her arm.

"Let them pass," the creature ground out in a gravelling voice, tripping over the vowels. "Queen says, let them pass."

"Oh. Right," Liz muttered awkwardly, and tried to give the thing a friendly sort of smile as she backed up, grabbing a fistful of Red's coat and pulling him with her – he was still trying to see past the rest of the crowd.

The creature just grunted and stood up on the tips of its feet – all four of them – much the same way Red was. A path was forming up the center of the room. Liz couldn't see much between the press of bodies, but she could hear.

"Welcome," Nuala's voice rang out – Liz knew it was Nuala's voice, because really, who else's voice would it be? That didn't make it sound overly much like the Nuala she'd met last week; this voice belonged to the Queen of Fairyland, no doubt about it.

"The messengers of Mankind are welcome to the court of Bethmoora," Nuala said; she wasn't shouting, exactly, but there was absolutely no question of her being heard. "There is much here that must be told – much that I would have known to world of Men."

"Scary," Red repeated, settling back down on his feet and pulling Liz to his side.

"Isn't she?" Abe replied softly.


End file.
